


No Other Way

by stardropsapphic



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-14
Updated: 2020-09-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 18:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26453293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stardropsapphic/pseuds/stardropsapphic
Summary: Honoria writes a letter to her love.
Relationships: Alistair/Amell (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Amell (Dragon Age), Alistair/Female Warden (Dragon Age)
Kudos: 1





	No Other Way

Honoria cried easily.

It should’ve shocked her, given what she’d been through: Blight changed people. Wardens especially. All the death and destruction she’d barely kept at bay had to have changed her, deep down.

And yet she still cried as easily as that newly-Harrowed girl she’d been at the start of it all ten years earlier.

Ten _Maker damned_ years.

She wept bitter tears as she wrote the letter, the words muddling together and her hand shaking and the quill jerking across the page gracelessly.

_Fuck_ it wasn’t easy.

When she finally finished the damned thing, she could barely stand through the pain lancing in her breast. Signed and sealed, the Grey Warden insignia standing out like a brand on the yellowed envelope. She held her head in her hands and sobbed.

Sobbed for her foolishness, her pride. Her own Maker-damned _selfishness_.

Miraculously, her tears dried after a time. She stood on uneasy legs, grabbing the pack set next to her desk and belted on her sword. Her stave came next, helping her along as she hobbled toward the door of her quarters.

_I’m sorry, my love,_ Honoria thought to herself. _There’s no other way._

* * *

“A message for you, Your Majesty!”

Alistair looked up from the already mountainous pile of paperwork, exhausted and more than a little irritated.

“Yes, yes,” he sighed, waving nonchalantly. “Just place it in the pile there.”

The messenger shifted from foot to foot.

“It’s urgent, isn’t it?”

She nodded, and placed it in his outstretched hand.

The messenger all but ran out of the room, leaving him alone once more.

“What on earth?” he wondered aloud.

He glanced down at the envelope. His name—no title—was scrawled in a hasty hand he knew to be Honoria’s.

His heart sped up.

In a rush he reached for his letter opener, all but tearing through the Warden seal and very nearly ripping the letter to shreds in his hastiness.

_Alistair,_

_I wanted to tell you first, before you got the inevitable report. You deserve that much, at least._

_There’s a chance I can cure it—the Taint, the Calling, all of it. No matter how small the possibility I want to pursue it to the bitter end. If I can end this for you, for me, for Wardens across Thedas then I will gladly do whatever it takes._

_That said: I’m leaving. Effectively immediately I’m abandoning my post here in Amaranthine to head West. More than that you need not know. I do not know when I will return, if ever. But no matter the cost, I will always be willing to pay it._

_Know that I am sorry. Sorry to have left in such a rush, to have not said goodbye in person like we both would wish. It is better this way for us both—for your sake, and for my selfishness. I know you would ask to accompany me, but you are needed. As you have always been needed. The world does no longer need the Hero of Ferelden. My time has passed, war or no war._

_There is no other way. Believe me when I say this._

_But should I be successfully, and return to you in one piece, know that I bring with me hope for the future. Our future. Perhaps at the end of this, we can be together as we have dreamed since those days when we were young and hopeful._

_I love you. I will always love you, no matter what may come of my quest._

_Yours always, Honoria Amell_

Alistair barely noticed, but the page was dotted with what looked like teardrops.

“Maker’s breath,” he gasped, his fist crumpling the page.

He remembered her, arriving at the camp in Ostagar. Her wide green eyes full of fear and awe and something else he couldn’t describe then, but now knew to be that attraction mutually felt that would grow into love.

Her look of unadulterated adoration when he gave her the rose, when he’d confessed all those feelings he’d felt foolish for until she’d admitted them back.

The tears in her eyes when he’d been crowned king, knowing everything and everyone would keep them apart.

“Damn it, Honoria,” he sobbed, his own tears staining the page.

But there was no other way, and he knew it.

**Author's Note:**

> May or may not be drunk. Excuse any grammer/spelling issues.


End file.
